ABSTRACT
Constitutional identity is a historical construct: it evolves out of text-context dialectical interconnections. It is true that the founding fathers drafted the 1950 Constitution after having put almost three years of hard work. A perusal of the debates in the Assembly reveals that the discussion was intensive and always tuned to the concern of the participants for making independent a truly democratic polity. A careful scan of India’s constitutional identity developed both during the British rule and its aftermath shows that it was constantly being reinvented. There are many ways of conceptualizing constitutional identity. Legally one is reconciled with the idea of characterizing constitutional identity in terms of core legal principles on which a country’s Constitution is based. Apparently, this is fair since a Constitution is primarily a compilation of legally articulated provisions, and a legal reading of these enactments reveals their nature and also texture.
